On a mission to provide innovative supply chain solutions to its customers, Arcadia Cold blends modern facilities with best-in-class technology and decades of industry experience. Chris Hughes, co-Founder and CEO, tells us more.
THE NEW AGE OF COLD CHAIN
The US cold chain logistics industry has been characterized by an active and evolving economy over the past 15 years.
This can largely be attributed to a rise in mergers and acquisitions within the private equity sector during the mid-2000s – a space which had previously been capitalized by non-institutional sponsors, including families and high net-worth individuals.
As a result, three major new players began to dominate the market – Americold, Lineage, and AGRO Merchants Group.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the sector continued to develop further as a wide array of new capital investors and start-ups emerged, seeking to monopolize on the post-pandemic growth of the refrigerated and frozen food categories, alongside e-commerce and direct-to-consumer demand.
“Some of those new entrants have been successful in fulfilling their investment thesis, but many have not due to the operational experience required to be truly successful as a cold storage third-party logistics (3PL) provider,” opens Chris Hughes, co-Founder and CEO of Arcadia Cold (Arcadia).
A premier 3PL provider of cold storage and handling services, Arcadia boasts seven operational facilities across the US, with two more slated to launch in Q1 2026.
The company’s locations in Atlanta, Georgia; Hazleton, Pennsylvania; Burleson, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; Reno, Nevada; Jacksonville, Florida; Charleston, South Carolina; Joliet, Illinois (Q1 2026); and Crown Point, Indiana (Q1 2026) amount to 350,000 pallet positions and 2.6 million square feet of refrigerated and frozen capacity.
“We support a wide array of retail grocery, food service distribution, and e-commerce end markets,” he details.
Arcadia also represents a diverse set of food manufacturers who produce and sell consumer packaged goods, poultry, beef, dairy, seafood, beverages, probiotics, and other commodities for both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) needs.
STANDING OUT FROM THE CROWD
Since Arcadia’s inception in early 2021, its modus operandi has been to design, build, and operate state-of-the-art facilities in key logistical areas across the US to support the distribution, storage, and handling needs of its customers.
“The key to our strategy – and our primary area of differentiation – has been to build our facilities with careful design considerations that meet the modern product handling requirements of today and well into the future,” Hughes reveals.
The company also strives to provide industry-leading technology and supply chain information capabilities, offering the best customer experience of any provider in the industry.
Arcadia’s greenfield strategy provides unique value to customers that many of its competitors cannot – offering a high-touch, customer-focused model that operates within new, highly convertible and efficient facilities located in key supply chain hubs across the country.
“As many existing providers have grown largely through acquisitions, this has resulted in somewhat disparate systems, disjointed and inaccurate information, and older, less efficient buildings – all driving higher costs and lower customer satisfaction,” he observes.
As such, Arcadia provided much-needed market improvement through its greenfield model and has been capitalizing on this approach since inception.
Differentiated by more than just its operating model, the company’s strong culture further sets it apart from the competition.
“We’ve intentionally built our culture by developing our core values – community, impact, accountability, humility, integrity, and transparency. I don’t think you can build a highly successful company without building an exceptionally strong culture from within,”
Chris Hughes, co-Founder and CEO, Arcadia Cold
Recruitment, training, and hiring likewise play into the company’s culture as it seeks to train and recruit individuals who will lean into its values.
Hughes also believes that Arcadia’s internal beliefs naturally overflow into the relationships it builds with customers.
“If our customers trust that we will be transparent and accountable for our actions, be open and honest, and demonstrate integrity in everything we do, they will trust us with their business and their brand,” he details.
Ultimately, Arcadia believes it is a custodian for its customers’ brands – a responsibility the company takes very seriously.
TECH-AHEAD
Another incredibly important part of Arcadia’s service offering is its technology architecture – something that drives the success of the business and is a huge differentiator in the market.
It’s also an area the company spends considerable time and resources on to advance overall functionality for the benefit of its customers.
“Given that we started the company from scratch in 2021, we needed to select, test, implement, and train our entire organization on the new, state-of-the-art technology,” Hughes emphasizes.
This included training around the warehouse management system (WMS), transportation management system (TMS), appointment management system (AMS), finance and accounting, human resources (HR) and benefits, billing, and its proprietary customer-facing web portal, ArcadiaOne™.
“While our competition also has these types of systems, they might have been cobbled together through acquisitions of disparate systems or built from scratch – in either case, they lack the best-in-class functionality that our systems possess,” he adds.
Moreover, Arcadia offers a single system platform across its entire network through its software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based supply chain management system, Blue Yonder, which provides customers with uniform, consistent, and real-time information – regardless of where their product is stored within the network.
A single sign-in affords a real-time view into all aspects of any given customer’s supply chain, including inventory and order status, product hold and release functionality, real-time reporting and alerts, and a highly summarized invoicing and paperwork function via ArcadiaOne™.
“I’m very pleased with where we are with this facet of our operations, and we are laser-focused on furthering the functionality of future releases for our current and prospective customers,” Hughes informs.
SMOOTH OPERATION
Arcadia believes operational performance is the cornerstone of any 3PL provider and is able to flawlessly receive and process customer products and pick, stage, and ship orders.
“Without this ability, it defeats the purpose of our customers outsourcing to us in the first place,” Hughes notes.
As the company was able to build its operating procedures from scratch, it was also able to leverage its management team’s collective cold storage industry experience – which amounts to over 110 years – to ensure it could purpose-build a best-in-class operating model.
“In short, we built our operations around all the obstacles and irritants we’d encountered in the past, ensuring our customers get the best experience across the supply chain, no matter which stage or point they interact with us,” he outlines.
For Arcadia to achieve this status of excellence, however, it wasn’t only down to the hard work and effort of its team – the company is fortunate to have partnered with exceptional trading partners.
These include, but are not limited to, material handling equipment (MHE), software and hardware, cold storage protective apparel, maintenance providers, and its financial sponsor and growth partner, Saxum Real Estate.
“As a start-up, we were blessed to have the commitment and trust of our financial partners and operational suppliers. As a result, those relationships will be long-lasting and mutually beneficial,” Hughes assures.
For Arcadia, trust and commitment are a two-way street – and many of its trading partners are the reason it has grown to the size it is today.
CONTINUED GROWTH
Alongside its partners and suppliers, Arcadia is also proud of its dedicated team of employees.
“I am extremely fortunate to work alongside my committed team day in, day out,” Hughes smiles.
Doubling down on the notion that culture is directly correlated to the success of any business, Hughes points out that his team has been laser-focused on ensuring the company’s ongoing quality performance by hiring and retaining the right people.
“Each of my departmental heads is fully empowered to make decisions and be accountable for the performance management of our 250 teammates, fostering an environment of collaboration, accountability, and transparent communication,” he prides.
With utter trust in the quality and expertise his teammates bring to the fore, Hughes is confident in the way the entire company is aligned on its goals and objectives, allowing it to exceed targets time and time again.
Going forward, Hughes’ priority is to ensure all nine of Arcadia’s buildings achieve their projected stabilized occupancy and that the company continues to execute its customers’ demands.
“My goal is to carry on providing the high level of customer service that we have to date and to monitor customer feedback on a regular basis,” Hughes surmises.
With plans already in place to continue to expand and diversify the number and type of facilities it operates, the company continues to grow alongside the satisfaction of its customers.
“We’re looking to achieve an even balance between distribution, port-based, and plant-proximate storage and handling services to offer a diverse set of capabilities for our customers to take advantage of,” he concludes.
ARCADIA COLD PARTNER
